Communications Inventory and Recommendations
Prepared by: Tony Mannor, Public Information Officer, City Manager's Office Assessment period: July 2 through August 3, 2026
Attachment: 2 of 4 to the OPTIC Organizational Assessment, Communications Inventory, and Improvement Plan, Report 1 of 3
Scope and Method
Inventoried the City's communications assets and practices across website and digital, social media, media relations, department coordination, presentations and brand, Council Chamber broadcast, digital services (Ask Stockton and GoGov), language access, crisis communications, and performance measurement.
The inventory produced 13 recommendations. Each carries a finding, a recommendation, and a measurable target. Items identified after the inventory closed are listed separately in the Addendum at the end of this document, so the count of 13 reported to the Council remains fixed.
Recommendations
1. Website accessibility (ADA and Title II).
Finding. The baseline audit scored 41 out of 100, a Title II exposure.
Recommendation. S ustain the 95 out of 100 achieved, run quarterly audits, and build ac
cessibility acceptance criteria into every new page and the Revize redesign.
Target. M aintain 95 or higher, zero critical errors.
2. Website content accuracy and document access.
Finding. O utdated pages and hard- to-find public documents. Community Development migrated roughly 250 MB of documents to the web ahead of the Planning Commission.
Recommendation. M aintain a standing corrections log, assign a departmental owner per page, and set a review cadence.
Target. 80 pe rcent or more of outdated content fixed or removed.
3. Website redesign governance (Revize).
Finding. The Council is pushing for a redesign, and scope has not been governed.
Recommendation. S cope the redesign around information architecture, search, mobile, and ac
cessibility by default, with a governance model. A SharePoint document-library approach can move PDFs off the content management system and reduce migration scope and cost.
Target. R edesign scope and governance model documented and approved.
4. Standardized media response.
Finding. The re was no consistent intake, tracking, or service standard. Routing was handled c
ase by case.
Recommendation. I nstitutionalize the Media Inquiry Tracker, a one-business-day acknowledgment standard, crime-related routing to the Police Department, and Policy
13.01.030.01 City Manager and Council notification.
Target. 90 pe
rcent acknowledged within one business day.
5. Media database and earned media.
ATTACHMENT B
1 Finding. A strength. OPTIC maintains a media contact database of 13 categories covering television, radio, local, regional and national print, community, schools, financial, special publications, blogs, elected officials, and agencies. Proactive placement is working, with features in Her Magazine and San Joaquin Magazine and a pending PBS Viewpoint story.
Recommendation. Keep the database current and centralized, and formalize monthly earned-media logging and a pitch calendar.
Target. Earned-media wins logged monthly.
6. Department coordinator network.
Finding. The network is being reestablished. Named coordinators are confirmed for Community Development, Community Services, Economic Development, Municipal Utilities, the Office of Violence Prevention, and Ecological Sustainability. The remaining departments are in progress.
Recommendation. Finish the roster, set lead-time norms and a shared content calendar, and hold a cross-department information-sharing meeting.
Target. A named coordinator in every public-facing department; 80 percent or more positive director feedback.
7. Social media discipline.
Finding. Platforms are inventoried, but calendar compliance and engagement tracking are inconsistent.
Recommendation. Operate one content calendar with 95 percent compliance, per-platform key performance indicators, and a bilingual posting standard.
Target. Engagement up 10 percent over baseline.
8. Presentation and brand standards.
Finding. There is no citywide standard for presentations delivered to the Council.
Recommendation. Adopt the Presentation Standards and Brand Manual and template citywide, and require submit-ahead review for Council decks.
Target. 100 percent of Council decks meet the standard.
9. Council Chamber broadcast reliability.
Finding. Third-party control-system and integration risk was present at go-live.
Recommendation. Maintain documented run sheets, redundancy and contingency, a vendor escalation protocol, and a maintenance calendar so statutory broadcast is never missed.
Target. Zero OPTIC-caused PEG failures.
10. Digital-services data quality (GoGov and Ask Stockton).
Finding. Only about 13 percent of Ask Stockton requests carried council-district data, and departments need subscription-based public notice delivery.
Recommendation. Implement district auto-population and council-district reporting, and stand up Ask Stockton notification subscriptions for departments.
Target. Reliable district reporting; subscription service live.
11. Language access.
Finding. Spanish-language content is produced case by case rather than to a standard.
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2 Recommendation. Adopt a language-access standard for priority public information, notices, and video.
Target. Standard adopted and applied to priority content.
12. Crisis communications readiness.
Finding. There is no current framework or toolkit.
Recommendation. Develop a Crisis Communications Framework and toolkit, run a tabletop exercise, and define spokesperson and cross-department protocols.
Target. Framework adopted; one exercise completed.
13. Performance measurement and transparency.
Finding. There are no communications key performance indicators and no dashboard. This is the central finding of the assessment.
Recommendation. Establish 3 to 5 key performance indicators per department, an executive communications dashboard, and quarterly reporting.
Target. Dashboard live; baselines set.
Addendum: Items Identified After the Inventory Closed
The following items were identified after the inventory closed on August 6, 2026. They are tracked and reported here for completeness. They are not counted among the 13 recommendations.
A1. Citywide staff email access for the Public Information Officer.
Finding. The Public Information Officer previously held the ability to send citywide staff email. That access was removed before the current PIO's arrival. The capability is required for the role's duties as a member of the Emergency Operations Center command team and as lead for internal communications.
Recommendation. Restore the capability so time-sensitive public and staff notices, such as building system outages that Facilities or Public Works need distributed, can be sent quickly.
A2. Council Chamber broadcast distribution, interim and permanent.
Finding. The wireless feed to internal displays is a temporary measure, confirmed by Information Technology, with an enterprise solution pending.
Recommendation. Run two tracks. Maintain interim reliability for each scheduled Council meeting, and scope a permanent enterprise distribution covering the multi-floor feed, control- system programming, and ADA broadcast equipment. Information Technology is reviewing existing cabling to reduce scope.
A3. ADA assistive-listening and captioning ownership.
Finding. Assistive-listening equipment and closed captioning had no clear owner. Assistive listening is now scoped into the enterprise proposal. Captioning runs on the GovTV end.
Recommendation. Assign ownership in writing and verify function before each Council meeting.
A4. Website broken links and error-page traffic.
Finding. A 12-month analytics review covering July 2025 through August 2026 found the site's error page is the fifth most-viewed page on the entire site, with 72,871 views and
ATTACHMENT B
3 35,842 users, roughly 1 in 40 pageviews. The condition was inherited with the site and had never been measured.
Recommendation. Continue identifying and correcting the broken links and redirects feeding it as part of the website redesign and the content-governance program.
Target. Measurable reduction in error-page traffic.
A5. Analytics-driven information architecture and tagging.
Finding. The 12-month review shows the website is task-driven. The homepage is about 72 percent of views, and grouped by task the top destinations are transactions: Animal Services about 142,000 views, Jobs about 114,000, Pay a bill about 101,000, Police services about 86,000, Council and transparency about 79,000, and Business and permits about 45,000.
Recommendation. Structure the redesign around these task clusters rather than the organizational chart, consolidate duplicate entry points into one hub per task, preserve or redirect high-traffic URLs because organic search is the primary entry point, and standardize analytics tagging in a single template to close the roughly 6 percent of sessions currently landing as unset. An Information Architecture Blueprint has been produced from the data.
Methodology Note: Data-Driven Content and Design
OPTIC uses two continuous data sources to direct content creation and website structure.
Website analytics show what residents seek and where they drop off. Social media engagement data shows which topics and formats earn attention. Content and information-architecture decisions follow demonstrated demand rather than assumption, and are reviewed monthly.
ATTACHMENT B
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